Iran’s rial collapse mirrors Lebanon’s crisis, driving citizens to bitcoin

Opinion Share Share this article Copy link X icon X (Twitter) LinkedIn Facebook Email Iran’s rial collapse mirrors Lebanon’s crisis, driving citizens to bitcoin With the rial plunging, middle-class savers are bypassing local banks to move billions into the domestic crypto ecosystem. By Tony Yazbeck | Edited by Betsy Farber Feb 21, 2026, 6:01 p.m. Make us preferred on Google People waving pre-1979 Iranian flags gather to protest for the overthrow of the current Iranian regime in front of the Brandenburg Gate, on February 7, 2026 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Omer Messinger/Getty Images) The rial, Iran’s official currency, has failed in 2026. Hyperinflation chews through savings every single day. Sanctions stack on top of bad decisions and endless geopolitical pressure. Every day, folks wake up to less money. Families scramble to buy basics while everything they saved disappears. This feels too familiar. Lebanon went through the exact same crisis starting in late 2019. The same kind of banking freeze, the same worthless currency slide, the same desperate search for anything that holds value. Bitcoin turned out to be that financial safe haven then. Signs point to it doing the same in Iran now. Beirut and Tehran are trapped in the same mess STORY CONTINUES BELOW Don't miss another story. Subscribe to the CoinDesk Headlines Newsletter today . See all newsletters Sign me up By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms & conditions and privacy policy . Lebanon hit the wall when banks locked accounts tight. Dollar savings got stuck, then devalued hard into a pound that kept crashing. Over 90 percent are gone. Lines at ATMs turned into fights. Protests broke out everywhere. Money sent from family abroad became the only lifeline, but even those funds struggled to come through and cost a lot in fees. Iran deals with the same chokehold . Sanctions cut off normal trade. Inflation runs wild. Reports put crypto activity close to $8 billion in 2025. People yank Bitcoin straight to personal wallets fast. They worry about freezes or bigger drops. Even the central bank grabs stablecoins like Tether to dodge restrictions. In Lebanon, attitudes flipped quickly. People who once ignored Bitcoin started running to it because nothing else worked. Peer-to-peer trades exploded everywhere, esp. in Telegram groups. No banks needed. Remittances landed clean. Corner stores took it for bread or gas. A whole underground economy kept running while the official one died. The raw reality of Lebanon's breakdown Banks did not just slow withdrawals. They took chunks out of deposits. Promised dollars became local currency worth almost nothing. Trust vanished overnight. People who planned carefully lost retirement money, business cash and everything built over decades. Bitcoin cut through that. It allowed holders to keep something no policy could touch or inflate away. Holding private keys on hardware wallets meant real control. Verify transactions yourself. Remittances crossed borders in minutes, no middlemen skimming. Price ups and downs happened, but long term it held up way better than the pound ever could. Problems stayed real. Power went out constantly. The Internet dropped. Outside Beirut, liquidity stayed thin. Early on, plenty got burned by shady services because they did not know better. Groups popped up fast, though. Online chats, meetups in cafes. People taught each other: back up seeds right, run your own node, skip custodians. The crisis forced learning quickly. The clearest lesson stuck: leave Bitcoin with someone else and risk losing it to hacks, freezes, or sudden changes in the rules. True ownership means keys in your control. What Iran can learn from Lebanon’s experience Iran tracks a similar path. Protests show the anger boiling over. The rial keeps dropping. Onchain data makes clear that people move to self-custody to block seizures or worse inflation. Government signals mix up. Limits on mining clash with tests using crypto for imports. For regular people, though, Bitcoin stays simple: no one stops transfers, no borders block it, value holds outside state control. Stablecoins cover day-to-day. Bitcoin is the savings. Practices that worked in Lebanon transfer straight over. Find a reliable non-custodial wallet and back up your seed phrase. Create a network of peer-to-peer contacts for when fiat comes in or out. Those basics let the Lebanese people ride out the worst. They offer the same shot in Iran. Sure, obstacles persist: rules flip, the internet fails in spots, prices swing. Still beats staying fully tied to a currency that keeps failing. Lebanon proved that waiting for the government to fix things rarely works. Early action saved what could be saved. Getting control back when systems fail Lebanon and Iran lay bare how quickly centralized finance crumbles. Overprinting, account locks and economic isolation cause innocent citizens to take the hit every time. Bitcoin switches the game: no approval required, no one else bears the risk if the keys stay yours. The collapse in Lebanon forever changed its economy. Money moved from the into a survival tool, forcing people to learn about custody and real ownership. Iran is faced with the same lesson now: depend on failing banks or take the tool that hands power back. The rial's hard drop signals more than just trouble. It pushes change. Lebanon produced tougher people who learned what ownership actually means. Iran has the opening for that, too. Move before more vanishes. Check everything yourself. Build stacks. Hold the keys tight. Create real freedom. No one hands it over. You claim it back, one satoshi at a time. Bitcoin Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates . More For You Finish the job on digital asset market structure By J Christopher Giancarlo | Edited by Betsy Farber Feb 19, 2026 Legislators must choose whether America leads the next generation of finance or watches from the sidelines. Read full story Latest Crypto News Inside France’s strict rules for selling majority stake of its state energy cloud to U.S. bitcoin miner 38 minutes ago Bitcoin price slips after Trump hikes worldwide tariff to 15% from 10% despite Supreme Court decision 1 hour ago How AI is helping retail traders exploit prediction market 'glitches' to make easy money 3 hours ago Blue Owl liquidity crisis has investors bracing for 2008-style fallout — it could mean bitcoin's next bull run 4 hours ago Small investors are buying bitcoin. 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